Jackson State opens its season against Tennessee State in five days. Four of its players still don’t know if they’re allowed to suit up. The Jackson State NCAA lawsuit filed this week is their last shot at getting an answer before kickoff.
Linebacker Reid Pulliam, defensive back B.J. Washington, and defensive linemen Tymon Wells and Kazarius Bowie filed suit against the NCAA on Aug. 24 in Hinds County Chancery Court, according to documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. All four are part of the 2022 high school class, a group that’s been stuck in eligibility limbo for months as courts keep reversing each other on the same underlying question: does the NCAA’s four-years-in-five-seasons rule violate antitrust law?
A three-week window that slammed shut
This isn’t the players’ first attempt at winning back a season. On July 31, a U.S. District Court judge in Colorado granted an injunction in a separate case involving NCAA athletes nationwide, opening the door for players like Jackson State’s four to rejoin their teams. They did. Some reportedly quit jobs to come back and train.
Then, on Aug. 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit granted the NCAA’s request to stay that injunction. The door that had opened for three weeks slammed shut again, just days before Jackson State’s season opener.
Head coach T.C. Taylor didn’t hide his frustration. “I hate it for those young men,” Taylor said. “Those guys came in and participated in about a week, two weeks of camp with us. You had guys quit jobs in order to come back and play football. Now, here they are back at square one.” Taylor added that the program would have welcomed the extra depth this season, calling it a loss for the team as much as for the individual players.
Why the Jackson State NCAA lawsuit matters beyond one roster
The legal fight isn’t really about Jackson State specifically. It’s about a rule that’s been challenged in courtrooms across the country all year. Results have been wildly inconsistent, depending on which judge and which circuit a case lands in. That inconsistency is exactly what’s playing out here. One court grants relief, a higher court stays it, and players are left rebuilding their plans on a timeline measured in weeks rather than seasons.
Jackson State isn’t the only HBCU program caught in this mess, either. Southern head coach Marshall Faulk has been navigating a similar situation with defensive lineman Ckelby Givens. Givens is another 2022-class player chasing a fifth season. Faulk said Monday that Southern planned to wait as long as possible for clarity. “We’re going to take it up to the clock to see what happens,” Faulk said. “Hopefully things work out for the class of 2022, that those kids, they get an extra year and that Kelby gets to play with us another year.” HBCU Buzz has tracked similar athlete-rights fights across the conference in its ongoing SWAC football coverage.
The rules keep changing mid-season
Taylor summed up the broader problem in blunt terms. “These rules and laws change it seems like every 10 minutes,” he said. That’s not an exaggeration this year. Eligibility law has become one of the most volatile corners of college athletics. Injunctions, stays, and appeals are moving faster than programs can plan around them. Coaches are now building rosters around legal uncertainty as much as around depth charts. That’s a strange position for anyone running a football program to be in.
For the class of 2022 specifically, the stakes are almost entirely about timing. These are players who enrolled at the start of a chaotic stretch in college sports — one shaped by COVID-era eligibility extensions, transfer portal overhauls, and now this fresh wave of antitrust litigation. Every one of those shifts has landed on this same cohort. Every one has arrived with almost no lead time. HBCU Buzz has also covered how those earlier eligibility extensions reshaped HBCU rosters in its NCAA eligibility coverage.
What happens next
Jackson State kicks off against Tennessee State in Nashville on Aug. 29, and there’s no guarantee the four plaintiffs will have an answer by then. Chancery Court in Hinds County isn’t bound by the same appellate timeline that produced the 10th Circuit’s stay, so a state-level ruling could theoretically move faster than the federal case did. Whether it moves fast enough to matter for this particular opener is a different question entirely.
What’s clear is that these four players, and dozens like them at programs across the country, are fighting for a season that keeps almost happening. Three weeks of practice, a quit job, a coach rooting for them from the sideline — none of that guarantees a roster spot once the whistle blows. The Jackson State NCAA lawsuit is one more attempt to turn “almost” into an actual season before it’s too late to matter.
